Should I start drinking milk again?
Before the lockdown I was making good progress and completed my linear progression, eventually progressing on to a Bill Starr style program. During this time I drank a lot of milk, about a litre to a half gallon per day. However, once the lockdown hit I gained a bunch of weight. I had fairly sizable gut beforehand (I'm 6' and pre-lockdown I weighed about 225 lb.), but I really ballooned out when I was cooped up inside during lockdown. As a result I went on a low carb diet inspired by Bill Starr last July, where I followed his advice of keeping my carb intake to below 60g per day. So far it has worked pretty well. Since I resumed training at the end of August I now have numbers comparable to how I was before lockdown and I'm looking a considerable amount leaner than I did on "house arrest", as it were. Additionally, I have had no problem progressing in my training despite eating at a caloric deficit with very little carb intake.
However, I still have a slight gut and love handles, to which I am unfortunately genetically predisposed to have. I have no idea how much I weigh now but it's probably 200 lb or a bit less. Maintaining this diet has not been too difficult, and I've sworn off bread and grain entirely, but the one thing I do miss is drinking milk. On one hand I want to keep dieting down until I lose the love handles and the gut for good (I haven't had a completely flat stomach since I was about 10), but on the other hand I'm sick and tired of having to put almond milk in my protein shakes instead of the real stuff. If I resumed drinking milk again I'd probably limit myself to only a glass or two a day instead of drinking up to a half gallon as I did before, but I'm really concerned about the carb content. Since milk has about 12g of carbs in it per cup, I'm worried that it would just make my midsection bigger than it already is. I absolutely hate the fact that I'm genetically predisposed to carry a lot of midsection fat, despite having lost weight. My shoulders and traps are huge and look well-defined, but my silhouette is ruined by my gut and love handles. For somebody like me, whose physique looks really weird because of this, is it recommended to even touch milk at all? I miss drinking milk but I want to actually have a good physique instead of one that's ruined by stubborn midsection fat that won't go away.
